Cyber Bites

A recently exposed malware campaign that used watering-hole attacks to target iPhone users for more than two years was reportedly part of an effort to track Uyghur Muslims based in China’s Xinjiang state. The campaign was actually broader than originally thought, and attempted to infect Android and Microsoft Windows devices as well, reports are also stating. Citing sources with knowledge of the matter, TechCrunch this past weekend reported the campaign is the work of a state actor — most...

First there was Brangelina, TomKat and Bennifer and now Kaspersky has presented the world with BRATA, or Brazilian RAT Android. BRATA is not a power celebrity couple, but is a relatively new Android remote access tool family that, at least so far, has exclusively targeted Brazilians using Android 5.0 or higher, according to Kaspersky’s GReAT team. GReAT has found it hosted primarily in the Google Play store, and to a lesser extent on third-party Android outlets,...

A data breach at flight booking site Option Way exposed personal details on passengers and their flight and travel plans. Researchers at vpnMentor led by Noam Rotem and Ran Locar were “able to access over 100 GB of data, a massive amount of customers’ unencrypted Personally Identifiable Information (PII),” including names, birth dates, gender email addresses, destinations, flight prices and flight departure and return dates. Source: SC Magazine

The forums of the XKCD webcomic created by Randall Munroe in 2005 are currently offline after being impacted by a data breach which exposed the information of 561,991 users on July 1. The compromised user information including usernames, emails, and IP addresses, as well as hashed and salted passwords stored in MD5 phpBB3 format, was added to Have I Been Pwned's database on September 1, after being provided by security researcher and data analyst Adam Davies. Source: Bleepingcomputer

Phishers behind a new campaign have switched to using compromised SharePoint sites and OneNote documents to redirect potential victims from the banking sector to their landing pages. The attackers take advantage of the fact that the domains used by Microsoft's SharePoint web-based collaborative platform are almost always overlooked by secure email gateways which allows their phishing messages to regularly reach their targets' inboxes. Source: Bleepingcomputer

Parents of children who watch gaming streams on Twitch or YouTube on their phones or computers may be at risk of fraud thanks to a six-month long hacking rampage that targeted gamers. Attackers offering cheats for popular games Fortnite, Apex Legend and Counter-Strike fooled victims into downloading “hit-and-run” malicious software that extracted valuable personal information like Netflix, Linkedin and airmile account passwords along with auto-complete form data like names, addresses and credit card details. Source:...

An unnamed person is reportedly demanding 300 bitcoin (worth around $3.5 million) from Malta-based exchange Binance, implying that it will continue to release 10,000 photos that relate to alleged stolen know-your-customer (KYC) data in January if it fails to comply. In a statement today, Binance said it’s investigating the case for “legitimacy and relevancy,” but noted that there are “inconsistencies” with the published data, compared to the information in their system. Source: Yahoo! Finance

Kaspersky, a cybersecurity firm, says the number of mobile financial attacks it detected in the first half of the year rose by 107 per cent. The firm said it observed that attackers perpetuated their acts using pseudo names of prominent financial services and banks in its latest financial threat report. Analysts at the company said they discovered 3.7 million mobile financial attacks from January to June this year and found 438,709 unique users attacked by...

Check Point Software Technologies issued a report yesterday that detailed how its security researchers were able to remotely install malware on a digital DSLR camera. In it, researcher Eyal Itkin found that a hacker can easily plant malware on a digital camera. He says that the standardised Picture Transfer Protocol is an ideal method for delivering malware: it’s unauthenticated and can be used with both Wi-Fi and USB. The report notes that individual with an...

I plugged the Apple lightning cable into my iPod and connected it to my Mac, just as I normally would. My iPod started charging, iTunes detected the device, and my iPod produced the pop-up asking if I wanted to trust this computer. All expected behaviour. But this cable was hiding a secret. A short while later, a hacker remotely opened a terminal on my Mac's screen, letting them run commands on my computer as they...